She Came For Dinner. Then Ended Up With The Keys To A Brooklyn Institution

COBBLE HILL— For more than a decade, Cobble Hill resident Georgia Fulton lived just blocks from Sam’s, passing the nearly century-old restaurant on her way to work.

The Australian-born server, 37, first crossed paths with owner Lou Migliaccio when she began dropping into Sam’s before her shifts at the venerable Long Island Bar.

“I remember having that feeling of: ‘I found something,’” Fulton said. “I thought it was magical, so layered, and so full of history.”

Sam’s opened on Court Street in 1930, founded by brothers Danny and Sam D’Arco.

Sam died before the doors opened, so Danny named the restaurant for him.

Twenty years later, their nephew Mario Migliaccio arrived from Italy and joined the family business. His son, Lou, was born in the apartment above Sam’s and eventually took over.

Sam’s had long been a favorite of location scouts, its red vinyl booths and stubbornly intact interiors offering filmmakers something increasingly rare: an unmistakably old New York interior.

Lou, too, had stubbornly held on.

And perhaps that was part of what Fulton recognized in the place.

She describes herself as a room person: within a space, she transforms, nestling into places that seem to mirror her own understated, bohemian cool.

In a restaurant mopped with memories and character, her gravitation toward Sam’s felt inevitable.

“I only cared about this place, and I probably wouldn’t care about another,” Fulton said.

For five years, Fulton came to Sam’s solo, and then other times with friends.

You have to be regular to become a regular, and she was.

One night, Fulton shared her new favorite spot with her vegetarian friend, Rachel.

Lou took a liking to the pair, and, in typical Lou fashion, decided to let them in on a little secret: there was meat in the red sauce.

“Rachel was laughing so hard, but also about to vomit,” Fulton recalled. “We still came back the next week.”

Lou’s management style was less a system than a series of instincts, she said.

There was no POS, no formal staff structure, and no guarantee the kitchen would stay open if Lou decided he was tired.

Fulton remembers standing in the doorway only to be told she had to order immediately because he was about to close the kitchen.

“It’s just been a wonderful, funny, strange, unlikely relationship that I have with dear Lou,” she said.

Over time, she learned to read the rhythms of the place— and became the person willing to step in and keep things moving.

When his knees began to give out, he finally started thinking about what would happen to Sam’s. Fulton had already made herself the natural answer.

She began working weekends at Sam’s during the restaurant’s final six months under Lou, quietly learning the ropes.

Then, when he was ready to step away, he handed her the keys.

“It wasn’t like I was ambitious in the way I want to be a restaurant owner,” Fulton said. “It was very specific to Sam’s.”

Taking over Sam’s meant preserving what mattered while bringing the restaurant into the present.

Fulton kept roughly 90 percent of the old menu, paring it down from nearly 100 items and keeping favorites like the baked clams, celery and olives, pizza and parmigiana.

But there was no recipe book to work from, she said.

Lou’s handwritten instructions were little more than reminders to “roll into a ball in sauce,” so Fulton brought in chef Andrew Halitski as a consultant to develop the menu.

The operation got an overhaul, too, with a POS system, service stations and a full floor staff replacing Lou’s largely one-man show.

The clearest sign that Fulton had become part of Sam’s history came Wednesday night from an unexpected visitor.

An 80-year-old man walked in wearing a brown suit and asked for “Miss Georgia.”

He had been coming to Sam’s since the 1970s, he told her, and was grateful that she had taken over the restaurant and preserved it.

Then he handed her a small box tied with a red ribbon. Inside was a key. Fulton still doesn’t know what it opens.

“He just gave it to me and just elegantly walked away,” she recalled. “I was just like, ‘Oh my God’… It made me want to cry.”